Author:
Barnett J. L.,Hemsworth P. H.,Cronin G. M.,Jongman E. C.,Hutson G. D.
Abstract
This review of sow welfare addresses all aspects of housing for adult female
pigs, including the issue of piglet welfare during lactation. It puts the
issue of sow welfare in perspective by briefly outlining different approaches
to the scientific assessment of welfare, the ‘feelings, preference,
nature, and the functional or homeostasis’ approaches. We believe the
last approach currently offers science the best assessment of welfare and is
the approach that is utilised in this review. It involves comparing housing or
husbandry systems and risks to welfare on the basis of relative changes in
biological (behavioural and physiological) responses and corresponding
decreases in fitness (growth rate, reproductive performance, or
health/injury/immunology).
The review discusses the following areas: (i) housing of
individually housed pregnant pigs, with subsections on tethers, stalls,
reproductive performance, exercise, and new stall designs; conventional,
alternative, and outdoor group housing with subsections on aggression,
electronic feeding stations, ecoshelters, and other alternative group housing
designs; and other issues, such as lameness, culling, straw and other
substrates, diet and hunger, quality of stockpeople, and housing around mating
including oestrus detection and mating; and (ii)
farrowing and lactating pigs with subsections on farrowing crates and
alternative farrowing systems, stress around farrowing and during lactation,
maternal behaviour and piglet survival, and sow and piglet injury and
lameness.
Conclusions and recommendations arising from the review include the need for
public education to provide an informed consumer base that will result in some
consensus on welfare issues among diverse interest groups and the need for
industry education that results in better animal welfare and a sustainable
industry. Some specific research recommendations include space allowance and
the duration of housing for individually housed pigs, welfare issues of
breeding sows in ecoshelters, piglet mortality in alternative systems,
aggression in conventional and large groups, bedding, and hunger.
Subject
General Agricultural and Biological Sciences
Cited by
199 articles.
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